Customer Experience Stories – Killing Mosquitoes With A Machine Gun

customer experience stories

Companies take a very peculiar approach when it comes to maintaining high standards of
customer experience stories in retail sector.

They don’t shy away from making huge investments in technology to enhance customer experience but overlook simple tweaks to processes and people to ensure that the loop is completed and their investments yield the desired outcomes. 

 

Read :Why 3D visual merchandising can help stores improve consumer experiences?

 

There are countless lessons of this “cart in the front of the horse” approach leading to things falling between the stools but leaders refuse to draw lessons from history!

My recent experience with a home grown eCom behemoth reinforces my belief that companies unfailingly use machine guns to shoot mosquitoes! I placed an order for a refrigerator under an exchange scheme but had to cancel the same as the pickup guy refused to pick up my old refrigerator. I had converted this to an EMI. 

The EMI cancellation was promptly done but strangely they had charged me the principal amount to my credit card. That was when my crusade to get my monies back started. I made umpteen calls to get the refund and followed it up with umpteen emails. All I got was platitudes and a lot of emails requesting feedback for my interaction with their CS team. 

I could see a lot of newfangled technologies like AI/ML blah blah at work but the issue didn’t get resolved. After about 45 days, when I was about to go legal, the refund arrived. I figured out that since this was an exceptional case, their AI/ML powered systems couldn’t handle the simple exception. 

All that was required was a smart use of simple technology combined with a hybrid process which required intervention of an empowered human being would have ensured a far better customer experience. But this take no prisoners approach ended up with a classic “operation successful but patient dead” outcome. I have resolved never to go back to them.

We, at Simbus keep encountering multiple moments of truth when it comes to delivering memorable customer experiences. We have failed in many cases but the key lesson we have learned is that all it takes to maintain a high bar, is a commonsensical approach backed by simple and a frugal technology and a dose of human touch. One such area of customer experience for us is tickets raised by users of the applications we have deployed.

 A combination of a simple issue tracking system backed by a weekly reporting and a regular cadence call with customers has worked well for us. While our scenario is more a B2B, the lessons are relevant.

So how do companies approach the tricky issue of customer experience? A common sense approach, in my view, delivers a better outcome than a hasty “fear of missing out” approach of investing in newfangled technologies.

Do you agree? Would love to hear your views. let us know in the comments;

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